Does George Costanza work at ProPublica? They sure do have a peculiar way of viewing the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ This article makes the case that the “wealthy” “dodge” taxes by “skirting” law. (Interesting use of coded language – thanks ProPublica!) Do the "wealthy" take advantage of tax loss harvesting? Absolutely. Know who else does? [...]
Oil is up. Everything else is down. I need to do something. What do I do? Here is a good place to start.
A deep dive into the OMB’s Historical Tables shows some interesting changes in federal mandatory v. discretionary spending when comparing 1965 to today: Mandatory spending has more than doubled. Social Security and Medicare are the drivers. Defense spending has been reduced by about 75%. The Bush/Thatcher peace dividend? Discretionary spending currently stands at a paltry [...]
In an August 27th letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris (in her capacity as President of the Senate) President Joe Biden announced that he was invoking his legal authority under “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare” to increase salaries for roughly two million members [...]
According to data from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center nearly 61% of U.S. households paid no federal income taxes during 2020. That’s 106.8 million households – wow! And it’s the “evil” millionaires and billionaires who aren’t paying their fair share? C’mon!
Last night the Spender in Chief a.k.a. Healer Joe (we are healed now, right?) laid out in broad strokes an agenda to spend $1.8 trillion on what he’s calling the American Families Plan. He wrapped it in terms that sound soothing – “making care affordable, free education, universal pre-school” and “investing in the care workforce.” [...]
The days of thoughtfulness are gone. Brevity is the new wisdom. Today if something can’t be expressed in less than 280 characters it isn’t worthwhile. We’re barely done with the first paragraph of this post and some of you are already itching to click off and go elsewhere. Impatience is everywhere. We don’t read prospectuses. [...]
President Obama (The Orator in Chief) never turned down an opportunity to stand in front of a microphone. He was fond of demonizing evil millionaires and billionaires from behind a podium. He seemed to believe that rather than building businesses and creating jobs these people sat home twirling their evil mustaches and conjuring ways to [...]
Flexible Spending Accounts (“FSAs”) are a popular means for employees to pay for medical/dependent care expenses using pre-tax funds. Funds that are unused in a given plan year are generally forfeited. Thanks to recent guidance from the IRS that’s about to change – at least temporarily. Notice 2021-15 details the relief offered under December 2020’s [...]
With the move to $0 commissions by the major brokerage firms a new light has been shined on the practice of selling order flow. Just what is it and why is it as good/bad as you’ve heard? Let’s peal back the layers of the onion and find out.